Read Online IM10 August Heat (2008) by Andrea Camilleri - Free Book Online Page A

coffee with my pot. You want some?”
    “No thanks, Chief.”
    He took his time sipping his coffee, then went out to the parking lot to smoke a cigarette. Spitaleri had arrived in a black Ferrari. Which increased the inspector’s dislike for the developer. Having a Ferrari in a small town was like keeping a lion in the bathroom of your apartment.
    When he returned to his office with Fazio, they found Spitaleri with his cell phone to his ear and talking.
    “. . . to Filiberto. Listen, I’ll get back to you later,” said Spitaleri, seeing them enter. He put his cell phone back in his pocket.
    “I see you were calling from here,” Montalbano said severely, beginning an improvisation worthy of the commedia dell’arte.
    “Why? Am I not allowed?” Spitaleri asked belligerently.
    “You should have told me.”
    Spitaleri turned red with rage.
    “I don’t have to tell you anything! Until proven to the contrary, I am a free citizen! If you have something to—”
    “Calm down, Mr. Spitaleri.You’re making a big mistake.”
    “No, there’s no mistake! You’re treating me like someone under arrest!”
    “Under arrest? Who ever said anything about arrest?”
    “I want my lawyer!”
    “Mr. Spitaleri, please listen to what I have to tell you, then you can decide whether or not to call your lawyer.”
    “All right, speak.”
    “Now, then. If you had told me you wanted to phone someone, I would have dutifully informed you that all calls into and out of every police station in Italy, even those made with cell phones, are intercepted and recorded.”
    “What?!”
    “Oh, yes.You heard right. A recent directive of the Ministry of the Interior.You know, with all the terrorism . . .”
    Spitaleri had turned pale as a corpse.
    “I want that tape!”
    “You always want something! Your lawyer, the tape . . .”
    Fazio, the foil, started laughing.
    “Ha-ha-ha! He wants the tape!”
    “Yes, I do. And I don’t see what’s so funny about that!”
    “Let me explain,” Montalbano interjected. “We don’t have any tapes here.The conversations are intercepted directly by the anti-Mafia and antiterrorism commissions in Rome via satellite.And they are recorded there.To avoid all interference, deletion, omissions. Understand?”
    Spitaleri was sweating so profusely he looked like a geyser.
    “Then what happens?”
    “If, when listening to the intercepted conversation, they hear anything suspicious, they inform us from Rome, and we begin investigating. Excuse me, but you, what reason do you have to be worried? You don’t have a record, you’re not a terrorist, you’re not in the Mafia—”
    “Of course, but . . .”
    “But?”
    “You see . . . about three weeks ago, at one of my worksites in Montelusa, there was an accident.”
    Montalbano glanced at Fazio, who signaled to him that he knew nothing about it.
    “What sort of accident?”
    “A worker . . . an Arab . . .”
    “An illegal immigrant?”
    “Apparently, yes . . . But I had been assured—”
    “—that he was legal.”
    “Yes. Because he was in the process—”
    “—of being legalized.”
    “So you know everything!”
    “Precisely.”

6
    And, flashing a sly smile, he added:
    “We know all about that case.”
    “Do we ever know about it!” Fazio laid it on even thicker, again laughing abrasively.
    The lie was as big as a house.
    “He fell from the scaffolding—” the inspector ventured.
    “—on the third floor,” said Spitaleri, now drenched in sweat. “It happened, as you probably know, on a Saturday. When there was no sign of him at the end of the day, everybody thought he’d already left.We didn’t find out until Monday, when work resumed at the construction site.”
    “Yeah, I know, that’s what we were told by—”
    “—Inspector Lozupone of Montelusa, who conducted a very serious investigation,” Spitaleri concluded.
    “Right, Lozupone. By the way, what was the Arab’s name again? I can’t quite remember.”
    “I can’t